Dynamic HTML
Is this the wave of the future? (Christy1, 2/21/99 6:12:23 PM)
I received Dreamweaver for Christmas--after downloading two trial copies. I thought they would stop me after the first one, but those beta models kept showing up. I find the editor difficult, annoying but worth the effort. I am learning to minimize my frustrations. Switching back and forth from the code to the page mock-up is tricky and, then too, opening a browser is a necessity, as what you see is not always what you get.
Still, the freedom to move in space and the pleasure to animate over time, these things make it all worth it. Comments on dhtml? Or the editor. By the way, here's an address for free scripts, tutorials and trial editor: http://www.dhtmlzone.com/index.html
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Jeff Parker (jsparker, 2/26/99 12:13:43 PM)Christy: I too have had similar experiences with Dreamweaver. I have to say all in all the Macromedia line of products make great Webtools. Fireworks has me whipping out image maps and tinny tiny animated gifs way faster than ever. Also it uses Photoshop plug-ins. Director--aka THE BOSS--has really great export as JAVA feature that generates all the .class and .html files to run your Director project as a JAVA app over the Net.
AS for Dreamweaver, I'm torn. DHTML is such a chaotic organism right now, especially cross-browser and in my few forays, I've found it best to create the effects in other ways because it failed cross browser. You've had mroe experience with it than me, however so I'd be interested in what features you've found--besides layers or divs which I use on all ym sites now--that seem to perform the most successfully cross browser.
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Christy Sheffield Sanford (Christy1, 2/28/99 6:28:24 PM)Dreamweaver can be "preset" to go across 4.0 browsers. However, this is not foolproof. I had a perfectly well-behaved page in my editor but on the web, received a javascript error message. Boo-hoo.
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Morten Wang (NettRom, 3/1/99 8:09:15 AM)Subject is DHTML and Dreamweaver... could somebody stop me before I end up rambling too much? *grins*
I've tried Dreamweaver a few times. Version 1.2a, we've adopted it as the standard editor here together with HomeSite. Last attempt at using it was a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to try making a new version of a site I'm supposed to maintain. Due to complications between me and Dreamweaver I gave it all up, and went back to emacs. I've been working with raw HTML editiing since the beginning, and am probably stuck with working that way. I create a vision of the page in my head while editing, and therefore feel confident with working with raw code. I felt a bit strangled when working with Dremweaver.
Since I didn't feel comfortable with it, and it didn't produce the frameset code I wanted I stopped working with it. Therefore I haven't explored all its possibilities, like scripting. The scripting abilities of that tool is something one of my colleagues praises whenever he can. Dreamweaver is so far the only "What You See Is Probably Pretty Close To What Others Get" editing tool I've seen that doesn't make a total mess out of perfectly sane HTML. Combine that with its ability to produce pretty good code too and you have the reasons why I recommend it to anyone looking for such a tool.
When it comes to DHTML I feel a bit more comfortable. Over the past 5-6 months I've been working with JavaScripts and some DHTML. One problem I have with DHTML is the defintion of it. Exactly what is DHTML? When is a web page DHTML and when isn't it? My tree menu[1] is said to be DHTML since it creates a document on the fly, but once that's done I find it pretty non-dynamic. I have a remote control[2] that's more DHTML in my view, since it's page-dependent. The behaviour of it changes slightly depending on what page you are watching.
But, regardless of the definition, working with browsers trying to create a page that actually has some dynamic elements to me seems even more problematic than trying to create cross-browser compatible HTML. I haven't done a whole lot of experimenting with DHTML, layers and the like, only a small lunch break hack[3] I threw together so far. The technology looks promising, and opens up a whole lot of possibilities. Only problem is browser implementation. Very little is standardized, and you're left with having to test things in a dozen browsers to make sure it's close to working as intended. Not to mention making it degrade gracefully...
That'll be my rambling for today, now for some footnotes:
[1] Those interested may find my tree menu on http://home.sol.no/~warnckew/tree_menu/ (should open in a new window).
[2] To look at the remote control at work visit http://home.sol.no/~warnckew/gammon/ (should also open in a new window), make sure you have JavaScript and cookies enabled and find the image with "Launch the Remote Control".
[3] It's a quick & dirty thing I threw together in my lunch break one day. Simulates the end credits in a movie. Only works in Netscape 4.x with JavaScript enabled. URL is http://home.sol.no/~warnckew/programming/javascript/end -credits.html
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Christy Sheffield Sanford (Christy1, 3/2/99 2:24:32 PM)Cool tree menu. Thanks for sharing it. I tried to copy another tree, maybe the one you mentioned, Morten, but I could not make it work.
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Christy Sheffield Sanford (Christy1, 3/16/99 11:15:44 PM)If you like cinematic effects, there is a dhtml code for a curtain. It opens from the center and changes color. I found it at the Dynamnic Drive site. They have many special effects; some go across platforms and others don't. The curtain works for "all." I assume that is all 4.0 or above browsers. http://dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex3/document6.htm